My wife and I only drink double-shot cappucinos and double-shot lattes. The combination of drink selection plus budgetary constraints makes the EC155 appealing.

The online manual for the DeLonghi is sketchy (at best) but seems to indicate that there might be a fair amount of time between pulling shots i.e. my wife might be long-gone finished with her drink before I get mine.

It would be very helpful if any of the existing owners would share their experience regarding how much time is actually required to pull consecutive shots using this particular machine.

Obviously, if any of the membership has something to say, I'm happy to listen.

People think only of the machine they never consider you must have a grinder. The down fall of any machine is the grinder. A good grinder starts at about $300. They say on this board they can make good espresso with a cheap machine and good grinder but not with a cheap grinder and a super expensive top of the line machine. Without a good grinder you can't make espresso unless you use pressurized baskets and even then most people here do not recommend pressurized baskets. I can't overstate the importance of the grinder to coffee making.

Quoted for truth from another thread.

Grinder is the most important machine for espresso and probably any coffee making.

If you want coffee a lot of people here recommend a mokapot or french press with good beans and a very good grinder.

I was on a budget with my set up and bought used espresso maker and a new home grinder and spent about 1k. (I cheaped out on the grinder at first was at the 700$ mark, then I had to turn around and get a better one right away so that puts me at the 1k mark for my set up)

So that DeLonghi EC155 machine lists for about 100$. For that money I might look at very lightly used starbucks baristas. I often see them at the 100 dollar mark and often listed as not used much at all. But that still doesn't address the fact you need a grinder.

Hey Daniel, welcome to Coffeegeek! My first machine was an Ec155, and I may be the only member on the board to say this, but a good shot can be wrangled out of it--and you might be able to get the occasional microfoam, but there really are some essentials.

Get a good grinder; that's been covered already. But get a good grinder!

Next, if you do go for the Ec155, you should convert it to a non-pressurized basket which can be done for less than $10 including shipping. Might as well make it bottomless at that point also; the basket won't fit otherwise. You'll need to do this with any machine in that price range. There is an old thread on this forum that shows you how to do this here. You'll need to take care of the froth aiding steam tip as well if you want real microfoam. That link addresses steam tips too.

It will take a good 6-8 minutes (maybe longer) to make a cappa on the DeLonghi, so there is a fairly large amount of time between drinks; that is inevitably another issue with machines in the SBDU category.

Though I will stubbornly claim the capability of a good shot with the Ec155, it is worth noting I eventually upgraded and find working with the Ec155 slightly irritating. I'm still getting passable shots from it, but you really need to wrestle good espresso out of it.

*Edited for grammatical fluidity at 2:32 on 5/10

There's a big difference between drinking coffee to wake up and waking up to drink coffee.

They say with a good grinder they can get good shots from cheap pump machines. I don't doubt you can get shots from it, that time between shots is even longer than I thought. And if they like milkly drinks .... even more foaming is needed.

OP,Read the thread about what to do if you have only 300 to spend on coffee maybe take some of those ideas and save up for a bit larger starter machine with more steam power. And while you are saving watch Craigslist and Ebay and you might get an insane deal. I saw a 2 group commercial conti go for 100$ on craigslist and it was all I could do not to buy it. The only thing stopping me was a lack of 220 plug for it and not having the extra cash to have that installed. If it had been a 110 commercial or if I could have wired it up myself, I would have got it working or not. (and it was supposed to be working)

In the mean time to steam milk you can find a lot of steam powered krups and the like on craigslist for 20$ or less. They can't make espresso, (don't bother trying it just makes strong coffee) but you can use it to steam milk for a mypressi. Or even do cold brew extra strong and make cold coffee drinks that I really like in the summer. There are lots of ways to get your fix till you can find a deal or afford what you want. And at 20 you can resell it or give it away when you don't need it anymore.

A few weeks ago I bought an older Saeco Aroma (which is very similar to the Starbucks except the Saeco Aroma has an additional thermostat) off of eBay for less than $95 including shipping. I immediately removed the pressurizing parts from the portafilter and pulled some shots. It was obvious that I needed a better grinder (I already had a pretty nice grinder.) so I ordered a large used commercial grinder. Now I am set to pull some real espresso shots. Just saying...

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